The Unfunniest Joke in Technology

On Sunday, two young men from Australia took the stage to demo their new app at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco. They were twenty-eight-year-old Jethro Batts and twenty-four-year-old David Boulton, whose succinct biography on Twitter said, “Staring at your tits.” They were dressed casually—Boulton in a baseball cap, while Batts wore a hoodie, his hair mussed just so. They had some stubble. Their brief presentation took the form of light, cheerful banter: “We’re here to bring you Titstare!” The audience erupted in laughter, as they explained, “Titstare is an app where you take photos of yourself staring at tits.”

Their timing was well-rehearsed, and they set up another joke: “Why, Dave, why?” asked Batts.

Then many people laughed—some because they were amused, others because they were uncomfortable. Twitter exploded with indignation and defensiveness. Some said, “I am a woman and I found them funny,” while others complained, “There goes my attempt to teach my 9yo girl how welcoming tech industry is to women,” or that they were tired of being told to “Lighten Up.” TechCrunch posted a formal apology on its Web site, calling the presentation “misogynistic” and acknowledging, “Sexism is a major problem in the tech industry.” The message also sought atonement for another proposal made at the conference yesterday, a demonstration of an app called Circle Shake that simulated male masturbation. All of this took place at an event intended to “disrupt” industries. (Disrupt originated from Clay Christensen, in his 1997 book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” using the term to mean the creation of a new market, but it has come to signify something like “Invent Any New App.”)

The creators of Titstare then posted on Twitter, “#titstare guys here, sorry if we offended some of you, very unintentional. Just a fun Aussie hack.” The note came from the account the team uses for its service HateYouCards, which prints and distributes custom hate mail with messages such as “Thanks for swallowing” and “I know you’re the one, because the smell of your vagina doesn’t make me gag.”

Some claimed it was a brilliant satire. But Titstare is the laughable manifestation of the tech industry’s brute forces, the weary image that hackers will be boys will be boys. Of course, the joke has been made a thousand times before, with different punchlines—about dongles and big-brained ovaries—but here, onstage, it found its proper place as a twisted kind of standup. “Saturday Night Live” would have done well to perform a sketch this sharply pointed.

That misogyny is an institutional reality in a field that prides itself on its forward-thinking worldview makes up only half of the absurdity highlighted by Titstare. The rest comes out in the tech industry’s impulse to “disrupt,” which has become so superficial a conceit that it accounts for undesirable inventions that innovate only by successfully developing a previously non-existing thing—though it’s not entirely clear that Titstare even does that much.

A recent study by the market research firm Parks Associates found that women’s technology habits outpace men’s; they buy more devices and are more likely to engage in digital activities such as uploading photos or downloading music. This calls into question the disruptive motivations of Titstare, as articulated by its founders: “So what’s the problem, Dave?” “Well,” Batts replied, “Women just aren’t that warm to it.”

It’s all a joke, really—the kind that cuts, even as we respond with all it earns: a dismissive laugh.

Betsy Morais, formerly a member of The New Yorker’s editorial staff, is an editor at Harper’s Magazine.